A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy 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 theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
