An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
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 earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
