A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing 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 movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
