A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really 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 continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
