A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
