A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
