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A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all 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 earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid