A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. 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 jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten 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 corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
