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An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 affluent villains were killed 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 gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid