A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
