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An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid