A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
