An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
