A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
