An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
