An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
