An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge 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 targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
