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An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid