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A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid