A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "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 always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
