A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — 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 idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
