A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
