A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
