An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
