A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
