A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
