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A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit 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 at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid