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An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid