An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message 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 angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
