A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, 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 collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
