An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 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 specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
