A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
