A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
