A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
