An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
