A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
