A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*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, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
