A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
