A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
