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An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed 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 national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid