A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
