An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
