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A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

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

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid