A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
