A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
