A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
