A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
