An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only 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* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
