A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
