A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 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 furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. 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 future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
