A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "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 setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid