A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever 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 frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
