A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
