An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
