A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
