A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
