🔗 Share this article

An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid