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An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exceptions

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid