A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing 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 resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*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 ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
