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A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid