An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
