An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
