An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks 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, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era 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 packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
