A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
