A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day 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 promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
