A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally 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 respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
