A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
