A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
