A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally 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 live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
