An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
