A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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
