An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
