An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
