A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
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 banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
