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A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid