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An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

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

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid