An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
