A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
