A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
