A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at 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 cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
