A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, 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 societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
