A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
