A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin 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 well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid