A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
