An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too 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 end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
