A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
