An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, 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 — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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 slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
