A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time 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 superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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
