An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
