An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
