A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
