A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
