An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
