A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
