A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *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 suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
