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A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at 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 public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*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 stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid