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A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise 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 wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid