An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
