A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
