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An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid