A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
