An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none 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 different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
