A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
