A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
