An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
