A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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
