A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
