A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
