A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
