A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating 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 meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
