An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
