An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
