An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
