A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range 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 packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
