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A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid