An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 refreshed 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 presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
