An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
