A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
