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A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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