An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
