A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
