An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
