🔗 Share this article

A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid