An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful 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 core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
