A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
