An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
