A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
