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An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.

There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid