A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
