A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
