A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
