A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
