An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
