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An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid