A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face 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 ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
