A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
