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An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid