A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, 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 appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character 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 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 assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end 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 only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
