A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
