An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated 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 at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* is stripped of 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
