An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune 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 consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
