A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
