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A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people 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 alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid