A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
