An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*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 live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
