An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, 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 overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message 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 furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
