🔗 Share this article

A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid