An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
