A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 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 enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
