A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising 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 function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
