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A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid