A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
