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A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid