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A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone 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 more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly 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 killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid