A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant 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 updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
