A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant 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 a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
