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A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage 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 seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid