An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
