A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise 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 affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. 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, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid