A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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 wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
