A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
