A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating 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 avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure 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 news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
