A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
