A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. 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 frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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
