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An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

Some films diverge, 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, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid