An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
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 horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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
