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A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid