A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a 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 wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed 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 murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
