An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
