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A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid