A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog 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 that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
