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A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause 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, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid