An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
