A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *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 financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
