A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
