A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
