A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
