An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered 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 driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
