A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
