A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero 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 dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
