A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
