A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten 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 corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
