A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
