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A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid