A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
