A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
