An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 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 conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
