A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
