An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
