A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, 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 lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
