An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
