A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful 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 gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
