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A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid