A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*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, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
