An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying 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 impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
