An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero 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 prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
