An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
