A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
