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A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.

There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid