A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth 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 consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. 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 computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
