A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, 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 giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
