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An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid