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A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated 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 ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid