A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
