A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
