A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, 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 — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid