A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 updated 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 take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
