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A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid