A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap 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 altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
