A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
