An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
