An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
