A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
