An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, 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 giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
