A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed 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 riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
