A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
