An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally 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 the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
