An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, 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 public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid