A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
