A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
