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An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich 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 Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid