A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
