An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
