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A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid