A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
