A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
