An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
