An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
