A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
