A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
