A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent 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 concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since 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" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
