A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
