A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
