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A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid