An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*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 point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
