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A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated 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 gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid