An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
