A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
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 living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
