An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
