An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually 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 would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
