A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks 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 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
