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An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid