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A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid