A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
