An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
