An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
