An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain 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 depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
