An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables 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 moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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
