A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, 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 — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
