A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
