A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
