A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
