A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
