A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed 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 assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
