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A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid