A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
