A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
