A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising 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. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
