An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
