A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, 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 birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
