A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
