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A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine 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 evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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