A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
