A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
