A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
