A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, 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 — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
