A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
