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A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive 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 celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid