A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
