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An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid