An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
