A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*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 killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
