🔗 Share this article

An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid