A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
