A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
