A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
