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A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid