A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing 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, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — 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 idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, 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.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
