A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
