An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
