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An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid