An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
