A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
