An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
