An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
