A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
