An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, 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 colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. 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 digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
