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An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid