A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
