A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors 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 respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
