An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
