An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 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 direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
