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A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid