A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
