A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
