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A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exceptions

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* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid