A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind 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* is stripped of 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
