An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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, 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 destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
