A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune 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 devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
