A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
