An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
