An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
