A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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, 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
