A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
