A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent 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 negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
