A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
