A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history 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 destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
