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A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid