🔗 Share this article

An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid