A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
