A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
