A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, 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 computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
