A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular 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 gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
