A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
