A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
