An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, 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 applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
