A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
