A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
