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An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting 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 by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid