A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
