An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
