A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
