A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered 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 point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
