A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
