A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
