A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, 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 exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
