An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, 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 institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
