A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
