A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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
