A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground 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 violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
