A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
