An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally 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 regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
