A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
