A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
