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A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, 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 complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid