An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
