A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
