A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
