A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
