A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
