A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune 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 eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
