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A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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