A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains 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 hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
