A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
