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A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid