🔗 Share this article

A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid