An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
