A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
