A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
