A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
