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An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, 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 reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid