A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*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 at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
