An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only 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 a follow-up film. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
