An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground 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 fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
