An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, 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 identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
