A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
