A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
