A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
