An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed 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 rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
