An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
