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An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around 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 too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid