A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
