A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
