A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates 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 conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*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 rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
