A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
