A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
