A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that 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. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
