An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
