A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
