A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
