A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
