A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
