An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
