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An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid