A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
