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A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid