A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
