A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, 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 frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
