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A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid