A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. 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 lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
