An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 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
