A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
