A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
