A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, 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 — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
