An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
