An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
