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An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid