An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
