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A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, 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 directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid