An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
