A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
