A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated 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 affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were killed 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 executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
