A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed 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 murdered with a wine opener (*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, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
