A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
