A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed 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 plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
