A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption 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 reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
