An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
