A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed 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 driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
