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A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid