An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming 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 societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
