A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
