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A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging 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 basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

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

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid