An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
