An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
