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A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid