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A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid