A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, 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 societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
