A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
