An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
