A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*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 packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
