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An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog 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 entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid