A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with 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 prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
