A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
