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A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid