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A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a 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 eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid