An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
