An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
