A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*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, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
