A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only 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* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
