A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, 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 frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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
