A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
