An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
