A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
