A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
