A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising 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 clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
Maya Chen is a freelance writer and urban enthusiast with a passion for documenting city life and cultural shifts.
