A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
