A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
