An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
