🔗 Share this article

An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid