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A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid