A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
