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A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid