A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
