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A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid