An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
