A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with 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 entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth 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 consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only 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 a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
