A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors 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 respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
