A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
