An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys 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 inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, 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 obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
