A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
