A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
