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A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only 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 future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid