A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
