An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
