A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise 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 at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
