A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*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 super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
