A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 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 furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
