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An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.

There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid