A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
