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A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid