An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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
