A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, 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 bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone 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 more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
