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A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched 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* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid