A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
