A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *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, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
