A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed that very premise 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 wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
