An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*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 point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
