A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
