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A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales 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 moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid