A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
