A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
