A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, 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 that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
