A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
