An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
