An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
