A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
