A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
