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A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid