A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
