An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
