A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
