A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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
