A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
