An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
