A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
