A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
