A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
