A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
