A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
