A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era 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 presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
