A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow 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 societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered 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 packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
