A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
