A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
