An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals 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 contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
