A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
