A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
