A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money 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 devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
