A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
