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A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming 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 allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer 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* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid