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A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*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 super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid