A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
