A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
