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An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.

There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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 affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid