A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
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 hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
