A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
