An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, 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 lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
