A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
