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A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid