An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
