An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
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* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
