A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing 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 movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
