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An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid