🔗 Share this article

An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid