A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
