A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, 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 the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*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 gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
