A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
