An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 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 pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
