A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
