A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
