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A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down 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*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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