A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming 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 allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
