A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
